FOR STARTERS.

Young Chicago Street Artists Tag Bus With Authorized Graffiti

September 22, 1996|By Jeff Lyon.

City commuters may soon start hearing phrases like, "Move to the back of the mobile canvas, please."

First, there was the Peace Bus, the CTA hog that was decorated with peace slogans last year under the sponsorship of the Chicago Children's Museum. Then came the Earth Bus, painted from stem to stern with environmental messages. Now comes the Knowledge Express, a rolling paean to the virtues of reading, and the first bus painted by teenage artists whose ranks include a few with a police history of graffiti tagging.

The project was born one day when Elizabeth Hanson, children's librarian at the Chicago Public Library's Albany Park branch, saw the Peace Bus pass. It started her thinking about creating public art to promote reading.

Using a $40,000 Blue Skies for Kids grant from the Chicago Community Trust and a donated CTA bus, Hanson and Viola Stewart, her counterpart at Lawndale's Frederick Douglass branch, contacted their local high schools and the police department, seeking teens with artistic talent. The result: seven black and Hispanic kids from the two communities who, with help from the Chicago Public Art group, produced the movable mural.

Their newly finished work runs along Kimball Avenue between the two branches.